Recent changes in today's housing industry have led to an increased use by builders of premanufactured or fabricated construction components. Premanufactured building components, such as panels, are used for walls, roofs, floors, doors, and other components of a building. Premanufactured building components are desirable because they decrease greatly the time and expense involved in constructing new building structures. However, the premanufactured building components must comply with a number of required specifications based on structural criteria, such as axial load-bearing, shear and racking strengths, and total weight of the components. Additional criteria that may affect the specifications of the components include fire resistance, thermal efficiency, acoustical rating, rot and insect resistance, and water resistance. In addition, the preferred premanufactured components are readily transportable, efficiently packaged, and easily handled.
Premanufactured components for building construction have in the past had a variety of constructions. A common component is a laminated or composite panel. One such composite panel includes a core material of foam or other insulating material positioned between wood members, and the combination is fixed together by nails, screws, or adhesives. These wood composite panels suffer from the disadvantage of being combustible and not mechanically stable enough for some construction applications. These wood composite panels are inadequate sound barriers and are subject to rot, decay, and insect attack. Accordingly, wood composite panels are not deemed satisfactory in many modern building applications. In a variation of the wood-composite building panel, a laminated skin is fixed to the outside wood members. These panels with the laminated skin are more expensive to manufacture while suffering from the same inadequacies of the panels without the laminated skin.
A significant improvement to the building component technology was developed and set forth in my U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,846, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The improved technology provides a structural building component, having front and back side panels positioned opposite each other, and a plurality of joining sides positioned intermediate the front and back side panels so as to substantially define a six-sided structure having an interior area therein. An insulating core is positioned in the interior area, and the insulating core has a plurality of throughholes extending between the front and back side panels. A plurality of individual shear resistance connectors are positioned in the throughholes and adhered to the front and back side panels.
Constructing the building component using the shear resistance connectors substantially increases the shear strength of the component. As a result, improved building components can be constructed to vary the load-bearing strength vs. weight characteristics of the building components by varying the thicknesses, densities and configurations of the side panels and the joining sides, and by varying the number and positioning of the shear resistance connectors. Accordingly, a person can design a building structure, determine the structural requirements for the building components, and then select a desired load-bearing strength, shear strength, and weight of the building panels to meet the structural requirements, and then construct the appropriate specified panel required for the defined application.
The improved building components with shear resistance connectors can be very strong, lightweight, and versatile building components, compared to similar panels without the shear resistance connectors. However, the manufacturing of such building components can be a relatively time-consuming and labor-intensive process, which can increase cost and lower availability of the components.